


you look a lot like forever

by atrytone



Category: One Direction (Band)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Bad Pick-Up Lines, Demisexuality, M/M, Meet-Cute, Oral Sex, Recreational Drug Use, Strangers to Lovers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-04-15
Updated: 2015-04-15
Packaged: 2018-03-22 14:02:31
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 10,952
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3731536
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/atrytone/pseuds/atrytone
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Harry has the greenest eyes Zayn has ever seen and he finds it very distracting (or: a story about finding people who make you want to take chances).</p>
            </blockquote>





	you look a lot like forever

**Author's Note:**

  * For [dinosaur](https://archiveofourown.org/users/dinosaur/gifts).



> I’ve wanted to write Zayn/Harry for a really long time, but there’s something intimidating to me about trying to capture Zayn’s voice. These prompts were too lovely to let pass me by, though, so I present demi artist!Zayn who keeps getting distracted by how green Harry’s eyes are. This was finished in the aftermath of March, and it turned into a strangely painful and therapeutic experience. I hope I did him justice, did them justice. Thanks to D, S, and J for your varying levels of cheerleading and hand-holding and grammar wrangling and for coming face to face with the naked guts of this piece at various points and just generally being gifts to the world.
> 
> (Title is from “Better” by Betty Who.)

Zayn likes to think of art supplies in terms of groceries he won’t be able to buy. It’s a bad habit, and a masochistic one, but it makes it into a bit of a game at least. _This handful could’ve been a whole roast chicken_ , _that’s a small fortune in fresh produce_ , you know. Things like that. Luckily he can eat ramen, and go to his mom’s a few times for dinner and she’ll send him home with so many leftovers he’ll be fed for days, but it still sucks.

As he makes his way to the counter, at first he thinks there’s no one working. Then he spots the shophand crouching down, cuffing and uncuffing his jeans, brown curls falling down over his face, and, most importantly, seemingly completely and totally oblivious to Zayn standing there waiting to be rung out.

He clears his throat and the boy looks up and immediately flushes. _Good features to paint_ , he thinks. Wide, ultra-pink lips. Green eyes. Sharp jaw. A curly mop of hair, long enough to be brushing his collarbones. The lad’s first attempt at a “hello” sounds more like a croak than anything, but on the second try, he gets it.

“That’ll be all?”

Zayn nods and sort of shuffles his feet, because he hates this. Small talk. It makes him uneasy. He can never seem to get the right words out, is convinced people walk away relieved to be finished with him.

 “Someone’s looking a little—” the lad looks at the paint in his hand, then holds it up so it’s facing Zayn, “Opaque Oxide of Chromium.” He says it with a little laugh, like it is supposed to be funny. It isn’t, not really, but Zayn chuckles anyway and feels the knot in his gut ease up a little. He rubs his hand over the freshly buzzed back of his head and shrugs.

“Must be a starving artist thing, yeah?” It’s a weak response, but it’s something, and Zayn wants to pat himself on the back.

“Well it’ll be 52 quid, even.”

When he goes to hand the money over it seems like the lad is sort of obviously lingering, so he isn’t exactly surprised when he leans forward onto the glass of the counter. “What color would you say my eyes are, since you’re an expert and all?”

It’s not a good line. It is, objectively, terrible.

But it makes Zayn laugh.

 

* * *

  

It started off as a bet. Louis was going to make him join a community football thing that met at 8 in the morning on Sundays if he won. But they’d chugged entire bottles of soda and burped the ABCs and Zayn got to an impressive “R” whereas Louis couldn’t get past “N” and so now every Tuesday they go to life drawing. He spots Louis as soon as he rounds the corner, raises two fingers in a half-assed salute and gets a nod in return.

“How’s El?” he asks once he’s within earshot. He gets a shrug in response (Louis for “not great”) and Louis’s eyes sliding away from his to look down at his feet (Louis for “it is probably my fault”). “That good, huh?”

“Could do a pint after this, if you’re up for it?” Louis looks tired, honestly; he's got bags under his eyes. Like he should probably go home and go to bed, not go for drinks and then probably end up on Zayn’s couch smoking and playing FIFA until one of them starts to drop the controller they’re so knackered.

But Zayn nods, because he has known Louis long enough to know how he’ll take a “no” when he’s reaching out and at least this way he can take care of him and put him to bed.

“Everyone else already up there?” he asks after a moment, once Louis’s finished his cigarette and crushed the tip of it against the wall.

“Yeah, should probably head up. You brought my sketchbook?” He doesn’t like to take it home, doesn’t like to admit that even though he’s terrible, he has fun at this class every week; so Zayn takes both their sketchpads home every class and brings them back the next, never forgets (because Louis would never let him live it down).

“Nah, guess you’ll just have to use your arm. Your shit drawings should fit right in.” It’s the wrong arm, Louis is right-handed and he couldn’t very well draw on his own right arm, but.

The staircase they’re walking up funnels sound into the studio too well, so they usually try to keep it down, but that doesn’t stop Louis from shoving him into the wall and running past him up the stairs. When Zayn steps into the studio, the asshole is sitting in the chair Zayn usually picks, looking smug with his arms crossed in front of his chest. Zayn is seriously debating not giving him his sketchpad when the instructor stands up and motions the day’s model to the front of the room, indicates that he should disrobe. The model that Zayn hadn’t seen when he first walked in because he was so distracted by Louis.

The model that Zayn recognizes immediately.

The model that flirted with Zayn just this week at the art supply.

The model that is, with one quick tug at the tie on his robe, suddenly standing very, very naked at the front of the classroom.

Louis’s finger jabbing sharply into his side wakes him from his embarrassment-driven trance. “C’mon, ya fuck, gimme my book,” he hisses, holding one hand out. They’ll already have missed the first pose by the time they get settled.

The rest of the class is a blur. Zayn keeps trying to sketch the lad but every time he does, he gets distracted by how green his eyes are in the studio light, this exact shade Zayn has been trying and failing to mix for the past few days. For one pose, he decides to just avoid his face completely, but then he gets distracted by all the ink covering his torso and left arm. He’s got a tattoo low on his hip, in the same spot Zayn has his “don’t think I won’t" and the only response he can think of is _sick_. It’s even better when he realizes the lad’s tattoo says “might as well.” And then, well, then he realizes that he has been staring essentially at his crotch for almost a full minute and even the tips of his ears feel hot, his blush is so strong.

(So what if he noticed that, objectively, he has a nice dick, impressively large? There are a lot of people in this room who probably noticed the same thing, and Zayn would be willing to bet that his thoughts about it were among the least obscene.)

After class, Zayn is quick to clear out. Louis is uncharacteristically quiet about it.

Still, they’re both standing outside smoking and updating one another about their families when the model comes out. He has on these ridiculous sparkly boots and black trousers that look one wrong move away from completely disintegrating, plus some sort of floral print top with only three buttons done (and crookedly at that). Zayn wants to draw him, which is funny considering he just had the chance to draw _all_ of him and couldn’t get past trying to capture his giant eyes and then some weird wiggly lines that were supposed to be the curve of his shoulders down into the small of his back and through to his strong thighs.

The lad looks up to give a polite smile that shifts into something a little warmer, a little more genuine when he makes eye contact with Zayn. “Heyyy, I remember you. The art supply, the guy with all the green.”

Zayn nods and reaches out to shake his hand even as Louis chokes on a laugh next to him. “Yeah, hey. I’m Zayn. This fuck is Louis.”

“Harry. Good to officially meet you. Fate, innit?” He’s still holding Zayn’s hand, and his eyes are ridiculously green this close, with him leaning forward like he can’t help but get closer. It’s with a weak sort of choked-sounding chuckle that Zayn pulls his hand away and shoves both his hands into his jacket pockets, rolls back onto his heels to put a little space between him and— Harry.

Louis’s eyebrows are dangerously close to disappearing into his hairline forever at this rate. Zayn is still doing his best to ignore him.

“I’ve got a da— plans, dinner plans, but would you want to grab a pint or something sometime?”

And really, for whatever reason, even though he knows it is probably a mistake, he does.

So he says yes.

“Sick! I don’t have my phone, but you can just, like, write it on my arm and I’ll text you, we’ll figure it out.” He’d protest that he has his phone, but Harry’s already holding a pen (and where did he get _that_?) and his arm out toward Zayn. So he uses one hand on Harry’s wrist to steady it and scrawls his number with the other. Just like that Harry’s walking away from them, waving over his shoulder, and Zayn feels a little dazed to be honest.

“He’s not your usual type,” Louis says after Harry turns onto a different street and they can’t see him anymore. It’d be innocent enough, if it weren’t for the lewd hip thrust and waggling eyebrows.

“Shove off, asshole. Which pub do you want to go to?”

 

* * *

 

They make plans for Friday. Beer, nice and casual. Zayn gets to the pub about ten minutes after he’s meant to and Harry still isn’t there, which makes something twist red-hot in his gut. But he orders a pint anyway, perches on a stool at a two-seater table and tries to be calm. Really he does, even though he’s tapping his fingers on the table top in a quick rat-a-tat, drawing curly-q’s with his finger in the condensation on his glass. But the truth is, he’d sort of sworn off the dating thing after Perrie. The truth is, he’s always the late one because he hates to have to wait around on people, hates the uncertainty of it. So he’s nervous.

It only gets worse once Harry shows up, because he goes right in for a hug. It’s not that Zayn doesn’t hug, just that he likes to sort of steer things at his pace, and Harry seems more the blindly-going-full-steam-ahead type. Which mostly makes Zayn think that this was probably a bad idea. He spends the entire time that Harry is explaining how he ran into an old friend on the way over and got distracted talking to trying to figure out how to get out of this. Whatever this is, this non-date, this maybe-date? _Why_ did he agree to go on a date?

There's this pause once Harry sits down before Zayn rushes to fill the quiet. “So are you an artist?” Harry looks so confused that he immediately feels like he needs to elaborate. “I mean, the art supply gig, the modeling…”

“Oh! Oh, no. I uh. I don’t know anything about art.” When he grins it’s all teeth and dimples and he barely waits for Zayn to react before plowing ahead with the story. “I mean, I know some things I guess, but basic things, you know? I’m uh, not an artist or anything. I just like, there was a job? A job posting you know? And I came in for the interview, and the owner has this dog, Bruiser. And I guess the dog liked me. Plus I sort of offered to walk to the dog? On my lunch breaks?”

“Do you say everything like a question?” He only means to tease, but he feels a bit poor about it when a blush turns Harry’s cheeks this rosy pink, even if it is a lovely shade.

“Niall’s always telling me I’m a terrible storyteller. He works at the same restaurant as me, he’s the bartender. I used to be a baker. But I’d burn too many of the breakfast pastries so they put me on waiting duty. I mess up the orders sometimes but people like me, so it’s usually alright.” He says it so effortlessly, _people like me,_ and Zayn marvels at the thought for a second.

“I’m an artist,” he offers a moment before he realizes that Harry already probably knows that from context clues. He feels off his game, like that hug at the beginning and being so nervous about Harry being late disarmed him to the point where he still hasn’t regained any of that protective veneer, that detachment that helps steady him.

Harry’s knee bumps against his once, just gently, and Zayn apologizes reflexively. Then later in the conversation, once they’ve talked family and dream careers and childhoods and finished their first (and second) rounds, Harry reaches for something at the same time Zayn does, ghosts his fingers over the back of Zayn’s hand and mumbles something that could be “sorry” or could be nonsense. He looks so damn innocent, but Zayn wasn’t born yesterday, and he knows better, knows that Harry’s flirting, knows that he’s trying to work him up with these barely-there touches.

Honestly, Zayn would appreciate the smoothness and relentlessness of Harry’s approach if he wasn’t so busy beating himself up for thinking this was a good idea. Because no matter how much he likes talking to Harry (and really, he does, because this lad is weird and a truly terrible storyteller but he’s weird in a way Zayn likes, and the number of words he can pack into a single sentence is truly remarkable), it’s clear that Harry has a goal in mind that is not anything Zayn is interested in.

 He can see the exact moment Harry starts to shut off, the moment Harry realizes he’s not getting anywhere, and he shouldn’t be surprised, but he is. He shouldn’t be disappointed, but there’s that kick in his gut anyway. They’re just these small movements— Harry’s shoulders square up a little, he leans back on his stool— but they speak volumes.

“I, uh. I think I work early tomorrow?” Harry says it like a question.

The thing is, Zayn really doesn’t want him to leave, but he doesn’t have the words to stop him. So instead he nods and stands up, thinks about putting his coat on but decides he wants to enjoy the night air while the weather holds.

When he offers to walk Harry home, it makes Harry pause in the process of putting on his jacket like he’s considering saying no, but then he gives a little smile and nods. “Yeah, that’d be good. Thank you.”

It’s a relief to realize that Harry lives just a few blocks from the pub because he keeps taking these big inhales like he’s about to say something but then stays quiet, and Zayn can’t bring himself to pressure him but every time he does it feels like Zayn’s heartbeat gets just a little faster, so they make the trip in almost silence and when Harry stops in front of the building and turns to look at him, Zayn has to make a conscious effort not to sigh in relief.

When Harry turns to face him, he’s got one corner of his lower lip pulled in between his teeth and the other side is swollen red like he was chewing as they walked. It shouldn’t help, but it does, realizing Harry was uneasy too, maybe as uneasy as Zayn, maybe more so. He just has different tells.

The way Zayn’s stomach swoops reminds him of driving too fast over hills, of the pale baby blue of the summer sky, of Ferris wheels when you’re at the very top.

He wants to kiss Harry.

So before he can question it, before he’s even really fully processed wanting to, he leans forward and brushes his mouth over Harry’s, almost laughs at how eagerly Harry moves into it, parting his lips almost instantly. _That’s nice_ , Zayn thinks. Like sliding into a warm bath, or that first big stretch after a long night’s sleep.

“Christ you’re fit. I didn’t think you were interested,” Harry mumbles against his mouth, settling one big hand at the small of Zayn’s back. “Wanna come upstairs?”

 _Fuck, fuck, fuck_. “No.”

There is a little pucker in between Harry’s eyebrows as he frowns and Zayn doesn’t want him to get the wrong idea but he also doesn’t want to get into all of it right now. Not when it’s so late and not when they’ve both got a couple of beers in them.

“Shit, I’m— look, it’s weird, yeah?”

“Are you seeing someone?” He takes one big step away, putting distance between them and lining himself up with the door of his building so that it looks like he is poised to escape. The only thing missing is his hand on the doorknob.

“No, fuck, of course not. I wouldn’t— no.” His tongue feels like mush in his mouth. Everything is getting all jumbled, like it does when he gets flustered. He likes talking to Harry, he thinks he could like hanging out with him, and now he’s gone and fucked it all up because he thought it might be nice to see how he kissed. “It’s like, I just don’t do that. The upstairs bit.”

“The upstairs bit,” Harry echoes, still looking like the epitome of perplexed.

Zayn scrubs a hand up and down the back of his head, wants to curse again. He feels muddied, like the alcohol is just now hitting him. He feels disappointed. “I’m sorry, I think I just need to go to bed. Sorry, yeah.”

He starts to walk away but pauses when Harry says his name. “Message me when you get back to your flat, please? I’d like to know you made it safely.”

Zayn just nods, even though he knows it makes him look like a dick, because he’s afraid of opening his dumb mouth again. And if he spends the entire walk home beating himself up, well, he’s the only one who has to know.

He’s already been home long enough that Tiger has curled up into a ball on his back and is purring away when he remembers to text Harry.

_Home safe . Sorry for being weird there at the end ._

_You want to hear weird? I have four nipples, and I may have just found a fifth._

He’s just staring at his phone, dumbfounded, when it vibrates again and a new message pops up. _False alarm. It was a cookie crumb._ It makes him laugh loud enough to startle the cat, who runs out of the bedroom, tail flicking. She’ll probably wake him up at 6am chewing on his fingers now.

 _U gonna be up awhile ? Could tell you what was going on tonight ._ He stares at the blinking cursor for a second and debates deleting the message; hits send instead and holds his breath.

_Brushing teeth. I’ll call in ten._

By the time Harry calls, Tiger seems to have forgiven him enough that she’s curled up on the spare pillow. He’s so nervous that he thinks about not answering, but then she opens one eye and glares at him and he figures that unless he wants her to pee on his bed, he better stop the phone’s ringing.

“Hey, sorry about earlier.”

“I really do have four nipples, you know.” Well, that’s one way to start a conversation.

“Like four proper nipples? Fully functional?” He tries to picture it; two nipples on each side where one would normally be. Doesn’t remember that from the other day, but then again he’d been a little distracted.

“Two proper, two strictly ornamental. Further down my stomach, like.” Zayn can picture Harry touching the tip of his finger to each one, like he’s counting them, and feels himself smile. He’d bet money that he sleeps nude or just in his briefs; you’ve got to be one of those types who’s comfortable with your naked body to want to life model. “My mum says I must’ve had a twin, early on. Re-absorbed them or something.”

“Sick!”

“I was a cannibal fetus. That’s probably why you didn’t want to come upstairs with me, isn’t it? It’s alright, you can admit it.” It’s a prompt for the real reason as much as it’s an out.

It makes Zayn want to be honest with him, even though his palms are sweating against the skin of his stomach and the back of his phone because he’s so afraid. He doesn’t usually talk about it with strangers and definitely not over the phone. Louis knows, his family knows; everyone he’s close to knows. It’s not even something he’s still coming to terms with. It’s just… weird to talk about with someone he doesn’t really know.

“Zayn?” Harry’s voice gets deeper when it’s quiet, or maybe just when he’s tired, Zayn notices.

“I’m here.” _Here goes nothing_. “Do you know what demi means? Like demisexual?”

He can hear Harry yawn on the other end of the line, hear the rustling of fabric; he imagines him rearranging his pillow beneath his head. It makes it feel less weird, talking about it over the phone, if he thinks about the real physical space Harry’s occupying. He’s not quite sure why, it just does.

“Not really, but I can find out. You don’t have to explain, like you don’t need to explain it to me unless you want to.”

That helps too, somehow. “Yeah, okay. Just, like— I don’t want you to think you did anything wrong. I get nervous around new people sometimes, but not wanting to go upstairs wasn’t because of anything you did. I just. I don’t do that.” That’s not quite true but it’s easier to describe that way.

“Okay.” There’s a beat where it seems like Harry might say something else, or maybe like he’s waiting for Zayn, but then he’s forging right ahead. “You said you had sisters, right? What are their names?”

They talk for so long that Zayn’s ear feels hot against the glass of his phone, long enough that he has to switch hands so that the blood can flow properly to his other arm. Zayn asks about Harry’s sister, Gemma, and does his best to be a better listener this time. They find out they’re both close to their mums, that they both wanted to go into the arts. Harry wanted to be a famous rock star, but now he wants to be a TV personality. Zayn thinks that he’d be good in the public eye; he’s charming enough, sure, and those dimples would have the better part of the UK’s population swooning, but he’s already realizing there’s a guardedness to Harry that would work well for that kind of world, that would protect him, a guard Zayn doesn’t have. He doesn’t think he could stand all that attention, all that prying. He’d much rather let his art do the communicating and be able to go out to lunch without being recognized by complete strangers. Their voices get quieter and their words further apart and honestly at this point it feels like it takes Harry about ten minutes to mumble his way through one sentence but Zayn doesn’t want to be the first to say goodbye, the one to hang up. He likes talking to Harry.

He’s just about to ask Harry about his favorite superhero when he hears the soft snoring on the other end of the line.

“Harry?” It’s barely a whisper.

“G’night.”

 

* * *

 

_"Plans tomorrow?_

Zayn doesn’t see the text, not at first. He meets Doniya for lunch and then he goes home and finally starts to make progress on the painting he has been working on, mixes the exact shade of green that he’s been trying to capture, the one that reminds him of Harry’s eyes, so it’s late when he gets out of the shower and refills the cat food and sits down to eat leftover takeaway and finally looks at his phone, sees the first text and sees that Harry has since followed up with an entire row of monkeys hiding their eyes. They’ve been texting almost every day, talked on the phone again, but it’s like they’ve been dancing around actually meeting again.

Until now apparently.

“ _Work all day . Weekend maybe ?_ ” On second thought, he goes back and adds a sad-face, so Harry doesn’t think he’s blowing him off.

He gets a line of various crying, moping, sad, yelling emoji back, and shakes his head. Types back “ _this weekend !_ ” and puts his phone down.

When he sees himself in the mirror above his bathroom sink, he’s still smiling. He makes Tiger promise not to tell anyone.

 

* * *

Of all the things Zayn definitely did not expect to happen during his shift, hearing Harry’s voice would’ve been near the top of that list. And yet it’s about an hour and a half until close when the little bell above the door chimes and he’s not even managed to raise his head before—  “You work at a flower shop! You are a florist! How did I not know this?”

Harry is standing in the door with his hands on his hips. He’s got this dumb wide-brimmed black hat on and those rags he calls jeans, and he may as well not be wearing a shirt at all for all the coverage he’s getting out of the white one he’s got on. Zayn is pretty sure he can see a nipple. He looks a bit like an Amish stripper. _Is he a stripper?_ Zayn wonders. “We met less than two weeks ago, that’s how. And anyway, I’m not a florist.”

“Is this a flower shop?”

“Yes.”

“What kind of flower is this?” He’s near the front of the shop, by the windows, and pulling a flower from the top row of cubbies.

Zayn can’t help but roll his eyes. “That? That’s a spellbreaker dahlia.”

A few steps with those long, long legs and he’s much closer, on the other side of the displays, pulling a bright yellow flower. “And this?”

“That’s a sunflower, Harry. You know what a sunflower is.”

When Harry stops moving around the shop and turns back to look at him, he’s got this wide grin on his face and dimples in his cheeks and for the first time it really dawns on Zayn that he might just be in trouble. “You work in a flower shop. You can identify all these flowers for me. You’re a florist, Zayn.”

Zayn just stands and watches as Harry comes closer, hops up onto the counter by where Zayn is sitting. He barely manages to pull away in enough time to avoid Harry tucking a flower behind his ear, and it flusters him. “Did you come here for a reason or are you tracking me?”

“I came here to get flowers for my goddaughter. Her mum and I are doing lunch tomorrow and Lux likes when I make her fairy crowns to wear. Seeing you here was just a bonus. Like a prize in a box of your favorite cereal, you are.”

He debates for a moment just telling Harry to go. It is a work place, after all, and at the very least it’s probably unprofessional to have a customer sitting on the counter. Or for him to be sitting on the counter while a customer is there, for that matter. But one of Harry’s dimples is showing and he’s wearing the dumb hat and he’d texted Zayn this morning and said he’d looked into “the demi thing,” said he understood and that he still wanted to hang out if Zayn wanted to.

Instead of telling Harry to leave, Zayn picks up his sketchbook. “We’ve got about an hour until close. You can stay if I can draw you.”

Harry taps his chin with one long finger and looks up at the ceiling like he’s actually considering saying no. “Will you tell me your favorite things about working here?”

It’s hard to put into words, honestly. The colors calm him. When things start to go to shit elsewhere, the flowers never push him to talk through what is going on. It gives him a quiet space to work on things. But it keeps him from becoming a hermit, and the regulars ask after his sisters, ask about his art. The difference between paint and flat canvas and working with the flowers, a living medium, all these colors in one place that grew naturally elsewhere. He could go on forever. He wishes he were better with words, so he could make Harry really understand.

But Harry’s here, and he’s trying, so Zayn decides he’ll try too. “Deal.”

So it becomes routine. Zayn will be sitting on the counter at the flower shop, sketchbook out, and Harry will come in with food and some story about how Bruiser was picking on some big Great Dane at the park, and leave hours later with an arm full of flowers (“for Lux, and Gemma, and Mum, and Lou!”) and a daisy tucked behind his ear and Zayn couldn’t tell you what they talked about if you asked him for a recap but it never feels forced, never feels dull. The regulars love the way Harry compliments their flower choices, even though he’s supposed to sit quietly on his stool next to (never behind) the counter when customers come in. Charlotte brought a box of cupcakes with her when she came in for flowers for a party last week and lit up like a Christmas tree when she saw Harry putting a flower crown (made of only unsaleable flowers, thank you) over Zayn’s head. “I hoped you’d be here!”

Harry’d been insufferable the rest of the day.

It isn’t just Harry doing the visiting, though. Zayn goes to the art supply twice as much as he did before and leaves empty handed just as often as not. He’s also developed a twice-a-week potato soup habit that will, as he tells Harry, only be satisfied by soup from the restaurant Harry does lunch shifts at. They go to a pub for trivia on Thursdays. Harry comes over for video games on Sunday morning. Zayn keeps expecting it to feel like too much, to feel like Harry’s expecting something from him that he won’t be able to deliver on, to feel like he needs a moment away, of quiet, but it never does. It just feels easy. They fit.

They fit in quiet ways, in ways that remind Zayn of the soft purple of dawn. Like the pale light filling the room when he drank too much one night and woke up on Harry’s couch beneath the quilt that he knew for a fact belonged on his bed; the sheepish way Harry’d looked down at his feet as he tried to explain that it was because he didn’t know if Zayn would want to share a bed, didn’t want to take advantage. Or like the way it’s so easy for Harry to walk up behind Zayn and loop one arm up so it’s dangling in front of Zayn’s chest, half hug, half something else, and it doesn’t even bother him, that easy intimacy. Or how quickly Harry seems to have gotten a read on Zayn enough to know the difference between days when kissing sounds like a great idea and days when, against everything he knows to be true, it feels too much like making promises he doesn’t want to keep.

That might be why it catches Zayn off guard when Harry tells him over bowls of pho that he got asked out on a date, laughter in his voice, like it’s nothing. Like it’s another story about tripping over a Frisbee at the park. And he _knows_ better. They’ve talked about how Harry wasn’t exactly the monogamous type, but they definitely _haven’t_ talked about what their relationship is-- if it is anything other than friends. He knows it’s unfair to expect anything when they haven’t done that. He _knows_. But that doesn’t mean it doesn’t sting. He hums and asks when the date is around a mouthful of noodles, hopes Harry doesn’t notice if he sounds a little bitter.

Harry’s response is to laugh and continue reaching with his chopsticks for a piece of chicken from Zayn’s bowl. “Trying to get rid of me, then?”

Zayn thinks _never_ and it startles him, but Harry is smiling at him all dimples and petal pink mouth and those green eyes that got them into this in the first place and he thinks if he opens his mouth he’ll say something much heavier than the situation calls for, so he just rolls his eyes and steals noodles from Harry’s bowl in retaliation, ignores the sharp kick Harry delivers to the leg of his chair.

Most of the time, it’s easy. Most of the time, they fit.

 

* * *

 

“You know we can actually make plans? You don’t have to just come sit here to see me?” He’s working on an arrangement, trying to figure out why it doesn’t seem… full enough? Round enough? Dynamic enough? But he can see Harry wandering around, pausing to smell flowers or hold them up against his skin like he’s testing whether a fabric’s color flatters him.

Harry stops for a moment, then turns on his heel and comes to lean against the counter where Zayn is working. “I like it here. Plus, we have plans, don’t we? Isn’t today video games?”

Zayn pauses in the arranging and stands up, presses his knuckles into the muscles in his back that are sore from being bent over so long. “I figured we’d just do that next week, since I had work.”

“Here, let me—“ Before he can stop him, Harry’s coming around the counter and then his thumbs are digging into the small of Zayn’s back, working their way slowly up the jut of his spine. “I’m just used to seeing you on Sunday, so I figured…” Zayn thinks if he was facing Harry and not, you know, supporting himself against the counter and trying not to melt, he’d see him shrugging and sucking his lower lip between his teeth. Instead he just lets his head fall forward and enjoys the way Harry works the knots out of his back; he’s not particularly great at massages, truth be told, but his hands are big and he means well and that’s enough for Zayn.

After a few minutes, Harry’s hands still, and Zayn finally gets enough brain power back to speak. “I’m glad you came to see me.”

Zayn thinks he can feel the smile on Harry’s lips when Harry kisses the nape of his neck, right below his hairline.

“Me too.”

 

* * *

 

They should talk about it. They talk about everything else, but when it comes to them, it seems like they’re always talking around it. Are they or aren’t they? Will they or won’t they? Harry stops going on dates, Zayn wasn’t going on them to start, but beyond that, it stays murky. Zayn keeps meaning to bring it up, but how is he supposed to casually ask if Harry’s just waiting for him to decide he wants to fuck, because that moment might not ever happen and anyway expecting it to is kinda fucked up, and is he really going to be fulfilled like this, and if he isn’t, how long is it until Zayn finds out he has fucked someone else? And then Zayn’s thoughts start to feel like they’re spiraling in on him a little and he has to paint or reorganize the flower shop to soothe himself.

The point is, that’s the only messy thing about them. Everything else comes so naturally. The point is, he is always telling himself that they need to talk about it tomorrow, but tomorrow comes and they’re curled up at Harry’s flat watching a movie and Harry fits just right under his arm and it’s so good that Zayn doesn’t want to ruin it, or he had a shit day and he doesn’t want to start unpacking all the ugliest parts of whatever it is between them, or they’re in public, and then they both go home for the holidays and Anne sends Harry back with a green jumper for Zayn and Trish knits a scarf for Harry. The point is, it just isn’t ever the right time.

Then one day he wakes up and it is somehow already February and they’ve been doing whatever “this” is for almost four months. It is gray, gray, gray outside, gray like it’s never been anything other than gray, wet like it will never be dry. Tiger slinks from window to window, staring out through the constant rivulets of water on the glass. Restless. A frenetic red, clawing the furniture, skulking and never quite relaxing. A tensed fist. An inhale. It just makes Zayn sleepy, like there’s only so much energy to be found in the apartment and the cat has it all and so it’s 1 pm, 2 pm, 3 pm before Zayn swings his legs over the edge of the bed and goes to put the kettle on.

His phone is buzzing on the coffee table, screen lit up full of notifications built up since he smoked up and drifted off the night before, crawling to bed at one of those hazy too-late too-early hours and leaving his phone and lighter and can all laid out in a row. There are snaps from Louis (he’s not making the mistake of opening those before he finishes his first cuppa again), a text from Doniya reminding him to call home, a few comments on the work in progress he posted to Instagram the night before, but the first message he stops at is from Harry and it’s a long line of monkeys hiding their eyes and clouds and crying faces, followed by a second message that is just a house next to a big red question mark. The flower shop doesn’t need him until tomorrow evening, and what with all the rain outside, a day spent in sweats inside with Harry sounds really fucking good. So he sends a quick thumbs up and then a bowl of noodles for good measure.

When the buzzer goes off, he grabs a towel and a t-shirt from the closet on his way to greet Harry, knowing better than to expect that he’d wear a rain coat or something. Sure enough, he’s in some brown leather jacket that looks butter soft and yet completely fails to provide any sort of adequate protection from the weather, so his curls are dripping wet, hanging sad on both sides of his face. His nose is red, like it’d be cold if Zayn touched his fingertips to it, but he’s smiling and his eyes are the same green as the new sprouts from the cuttings Zayn has been experimenting with in the back of the flower shop and he has a bag of takeaway in his hands and so even with all of that, he looks like sunshine, like spring, like fresh starts.

It makes Zayn smile, a big, toothy, crinkly-eyed smile. “Trade?” he offers, holding out the towel and dry shirt to Harry, who takes both with a bashful sounding “thanks.” He’s not expecting it when Harry just starts stripping out of his jacket and soaking wet shirts right in Zayn’s kitchen, but he’s not exactly _surprised_ either. He has arrived at Harry’s flat to find him completely unperturbed about being in just his briefs on more than one occasion.

“S’nice,” Harry says as he sits down on the couch opposite Zayn, folding his legs beneath him. “Smells like you.”

“What’s mine and what’s yours?” Zayn asks, a container in each hand.

Harry just shrugs and reaches for the container in Zayn’s left hand. “Figured we’d share. I’ll start with this one, you say switch and we’ll switch, yeah?”

“Yeah. Hand me the remote, I’ll put a film on.”

They eat mostly in silence while some terrible action film fills the apartment with the sounds of car crashes and gunfire. Harry had voted for some French film, but house rules say Zayn breaks all tie votes and all that. Zayn uses the power of the food switch once, and after that, Harry’s tucked himself up against Zayn’s side so well that they’re close enough to just pick between both containers anyway. Harry keeps moving his foot back and forth across Zayn’s ankle, but it is more comforting than anything, and that’s the last confirmation he needs to know he’s completely gone for this ridiculous boy.

Barely ten seconds have passed once the movie ends before Harry turns to him and asks if they can make a blanket fort. “I don’t think my flat is really suited to that. How about a nest?” So they take ten minutes to gather every blanket and pillow and throw it into the middle of the living room floor, push the couch and table out of the way, and build themselves a little cozy pile of things. Harry puts a record on while Zayn grabs a stack of comics. It’s all very domestic, really.

He doesn’t expect Harry to make it an hour before he catches him watching Zayn read comics instead of reading them himself, but he makes it about an hour and a half. New record, Zayn figures.

Even after these months of hanging out pretty regularly, it can still catch him off guard, the full force of Harry’s attention turned on him, that wide-eyed stare that would be creepy if it was anyone else (is still creepy sometimes, even from Harry), Harry so far off in his thoughts that he chews the cuticles on the side of his middle finger raw and bloody. The thing is, he thinks he’s being discreet, but Zayn can hear him lick his lips every few minutes and if it was anyone else, he’d want to grumble, or it’d make him feel uncomfortable, but instead he just gets up and flips the album to the other side and then settles back down into the nest they’ve made on the floor. If he stretches his leg out, he can reach Harry, so he does, resting his foot against the jut of Harry’s ankle and sticking his tongue out fast when Harry looks up.

“Some of us are tryna read here, yeah?” Harry’s smiling when he says it, already setting the comic down.

“Don’t stop on my account.” He should stop there, but it’s so much fun to get Harry riled up, so Zayn continues, “What’s that one about?”

Harry goes bright red and mumbles some sort of nonsense about She-Hulk that he definitely only got by reading the cover. He’s not even meeting Zayn’s eyes, which just makes Zayn laugh, and he keeps laughing even after a pillow hits him in the face.

It would be easier to stay cozy and happy and let all the things they’re not talking about stay unsaid. That’s Zayn’s preferred method of coping anyway, to close off, to retreat, to process things silently. And he’s realized over the months that it’s practically fucking impossible to get Harry to admit when something needs dealing with, that he’d rather keep up this facade like everything is fine and try to put the pieces back in place behind the scenes. But as scared as it makes him, this thing, whatever it is, with him and Harry feels like something, feels like it could be a big something, feels like it might already be a big something for him, and it makes him want to at least try to pull some of those walls down. Now seems like as good a time as any.

“What are we doing?” His voice is soft, like he’s trying not to spook Harry. Harry, the self-proclaimed commitment-phobe.

The smile doesn’t even give him a single dimple, which feels like something to worry about. “Cliché line, yeah?”

“Can we talk about this?” He hates how quiet it comes out. “Please?”

Harry settles back into one of the blankets and scratches his stomach as he looks back at Zayn; finally, he nods. But he keeps his mouth closed.

Okay, so Zayn’s going to have to go first. Which is his fault, he guesses, for bringing it up.

“Sometimes when I look at you, I feel like I’m looking ten, fifteen years into the future.” Way to go not spooking him, Zayn. “I just mean— shit— I feel like we’re treating this like something we’ve talked about, like something we’ve agreed on, but I signed off on a rule book I never actually saw. And I want us to be on the same page. I need us to be because it fucking kills me thinking that this might be casual for you when it isn’t for me.” That’s not quite right, or it is, but it isn’t the whole story. “I don’t want to scare you and I really don’t want to make you run the other direction. But I need to talk about whatever we’re doing.”

Harry has just been looking at him, watching him talk himself in circles, and Zayn feels completely fucking naked. When he says “say something” it sounds like he’s _pleading_ and isn’t that just salt in the wound.

“I don’t think there was ever anything casual here for me. And that’s not… it isn’t something I do a lot, we’ve talked about this. But I really, _really_ like you.”

Zayn’s heartbeat is thundering in his ears to the point where he feels like maybe he actually missed what Harry was really saying and now he’s just hallucinating. “You know I might never want— all that, right? I’ve dated people where it never happened?”

“Yeah, I do. I get that.”

“And you’re okay with that?”

Harry opens his mouth to respond and then pauses, chews on his lips. _This is it_ , Zayn thinks. He’s never thought about it in these terms. But Harry nods and reaches his hand out for Zayn’s, keeps it held out until Zayn takes it, then pulls firmly to get him to move closer. “Yeah, I’m okay with that. You know— listen, Zayn. I like people. I’ve liked lots of people. And I mean, I like sex, I like having sex with people I like. But I’ve never liked someone the way I like you, I’ve never started to feel something that— big, or whatever, you know? And not want to run the other way. And I think that’s worth something. That’s worth trying.”

There’s a stone in Zayn’s throat that he has to swallow around before he can respond, which might be why it takes a moment or two or three, just enough that Harry starts picking at the seam on his jeans and watching his fingers instead of Zayn’s face.

It’d be easier not to ask, to trust that Harry means what he’s saying, but… well. Zayn’s not always had the easiest time trusting. “You know it isn’t something that needs fixing, yeah?” His voice comes out quieter than he means it to and he’s embarrassed.

Harry’s head snaps up and there’s something fierce in his eyes before he schools his expression into something more carefully neutral.

“I like you, like however you can be the most you, that’s what I like. I’m sorry anyone ever made you feel like that might not be true. But I don’t think you are something to fix.”

Zayn nods and feels dangerously close to tears, which makes him feel silly, so he just curls back in against Harry’s side. Decides that maybe that has been enough soul-baring for the day. (Week.) (Month.) ( _Year_.) That they both need time to absorb that. Center themselves. Maybe Harry can guide them both through some sun salutations or something.

The rain is still pouring outside and now that the record side is finished, it’s the only sound in the apartment. That and the combination of listening to Harry’s breathing slowing and leveling out and Harry playing with his hand, tracing the bones and touching the one tiny freckle by his wrist like he’s memorizing it, like he’s prepping for a test, has just about lulled Zayn to sleep when Harry speaks again. “I haven’t been someone’s boyfriend since school.”

“Who said you were my boyfriend?”

“Will you be my boyfriend?” Harry’s doing that big kitten-eyed stare and it makes the back of Zayn’s neck flush hot.

Zayn doesn’t say anything for a moment, presses his face into the curls hanging by Harry’s neck to get a few quiet seconds to himself. “I don’t think that’s how that usually works.”

“Who cares how it usually works, how would I know? Zayn Malik, will you be my boyfriend?”

“Might do.” It makes him smile. He hopes Harry’s smiling too. “Sleep here tonight?” Zayn asks. Harry’s scratching up and down his back in long lazy strokes and it feels so good; he wants to purr, like Tiger does when you get the spot just so under her chin.

He mostly just really, really doesn’t want Harry to leave.

Harry’s response isn’t immediate and Zayn has to remind himself of all the things he’s picked up about Harry over the months. How he protects himself in these quiet ways, seems so open and enthusiastic but needs time to process things sometimes. To get things in order behind the scenes. To make sense of things.

“I’d like that. Now, will you please shut up and kiss me?”

 

* * *

     

It takes three mornings before Harry learns where Tiger’s food is kept (and five until he figures out which mug is Zayn’s favorite for morning tea). By the third week of semi-regular sleepovers, Zayn has managed to get the average number of times he hits his head on a cabinet Harry’s left open down to two per morning, which is a major improvement. Louis takes Harry out (alone) for a “lads night” and that night as Zayn is trying to corral all his flailing limbs into bed and convince him to drink a glass of water, Harry asks if Louis is really a black belt in karate, which makes him regret finally introducing Harry as his boyfriend. They even seem to resolve the fights pretty quickly. Zayn knows it’s just the honeymoon phase, but he still hopes every day that it never ends.

 

* * *

 

It starts as a warmth in the pit of his stomach, on a Monday. Harry comes to see him at the shop and when Zayn looks up and sees him smiling, he feels it. By Wednesday it happens every time Harry texts him. “(stupid pun) (emoji) (picture)” and Zayn feels that same warmth and his smile gets so wide that his eyes go crinkly and he knows what it is. When they meet at the pub for pints on Thursday, Zayn spends the entire time feeling like he’s got a low-grade fever. It’s all smoke in the air and smoke in his lungs and only the cool swigs of beer and Harry sitting shining and fresh-faced across the table from him makes him feel centered, clean. He can’t stop licking his lips and he doesn’t know whether it’s the dim lighting or the want that makes his pupils look so blown when he looks into the mirror over the sink in the bathroom.

On Friday, Harry texts him _Bad day, going out for a pint with Nialler. You in_?

Zayn puts the plates of takeout back into their containers and into the fridge, considers meeting them even though he’d been excited to have a night in. (Then again, Harry’d been a key part of that and now Harry wasn’t in, he was out.)

But he texts back _Nope , have fun without me_ ! and changes into worn sweats and one of Harry’s jumpers, bites his lower lip almost raw watching the newest Avengers movie and worrying about whether he should’ve just made himself go meet them at the pub.

It’s half one when the buzzer makes him jump almost out of his skin. “Hullo?”

“Hiiiiiiii.” Harry. Zayn grins and rests his head against the cool wall next to the intercom for a second, then says “C’mon up then,” and buzzes him in.

The thing is, he always knew Harry was fit. He’s not blind. But this isn’t about looking at Harry and thinking that, objectively speaking, he’s probably one of the most beautiful people he’s ever seen, because that has always been true. This is about how sometimes it’s enough to just be close to Harry to start that warmth spreading right from the center of his body outward; it’s about looking at Harry and seeing everything they’ve talked about, feeling every one of those fucking terrifying, overwhelming emotions, and _wanting._ So when he unlocks the door and Harry walks in and smiles and it feels like it knocks the breath right out of Zayn, it isn’t about “fit.” But he _wants_ and that want goes right to his head 

The first thing he says is “I wanna kiss you,” and it comes out all syrup slow and low, and he knows that Harry knows. He’s close enough that he can see it in Harry’s eyes, the way the pupils dilate, the way he licks his lips and looks at Zayn’s mouth and drags his eyes back up like it almost takes more effort than he’s capable of.

But he tries. “We kiss all the time.” He’s making sure that they’re on the same page and it makes Zayn want to kiss him even more, so he closes the door and crowds Harry back against it, smiles at the way Harry seems to make himself smaller so that he _can_ feel crowded by Zayn, even as his voice pitches a little lower and he gives up the effort of not staring directly at Zayn’s mouth. “Well, not all the time, but a lot of the time. A good amount of kissing. An above average amount, maybe, even, although I’m not sure how you’d measure something like that.”

Zayn laughs into what little space is left between their mouths, rests his forehead against Harry’s. “I wanna fuck you.”

“ _Oh_. Yeah?”

“Yeah.”

This time it’s Harry that laughs, and his breath comes out as just a puff of air against Zayn’s lips, and Zayn really does want to kiss him and so he does, closing the space and covering Harry’s mouth with his. Harry’s lips are always so soft, but there’s a spot at the edge of his lower lip where Zayn can tell he was chewing earlier, a nervous tell like a flashing neon sign.

“Do you wanna talk about your day?” he asks without pulling away, not really, so it mostly ends up muffled and mumbled but he figures Harry gets the message, because Harry starts shaking his head so quickly that a curl hits Zayn in the face and tickles his nose 

“No, nope. I’m good. Don’t need to talk. Let’s just, this yeah? Let’s do this. This will fix my bad day. This is good.”

Zayn reaches back to grab Harry’s hand where it’s resting at the small of his back and starts to walk backwards. “Bedroom then, yeah?” Harry’s pupils are blown so wide that his eyes look almost forest green, deep and dark, and his tongue swipes across his lips in a quick pink flash before he nods, before he starts to follow Zayn to the bedroom.

“Can I suck you off?”

Zayn was already half-hard and just Harry asking the question is enough to get him almost the rest of the way there, the way Harry’s voice already sounds fucking _ruined_. He wants to make him a hot tea with honey and tell him to rest his voice. He also wants to push into Harry until he cries out high enough and long enough that he doesn’t have a voice for the entire next day. So there are some conflicting desires.

“Shit—yeah. Let’s do that.” It’s all clothes stripped off fast and Harry pushing Zayn’s sweats off his hips just a few seconds before he nudges Zayn to sit down on the edge of the bed and then he’s kneeling and putting his mouth on Zayn’s cock and Zayn has to bite the inside of his cheek to slow things down, to keep from embarrassing himself.

Harry’s mouth is just so—so much. So warm, and wet, and soft, and so _there._ It’s like Zayn’s brain hasn’t even processed that he’s getting what he wants and already he’s in that wet heat and Harry’s tongue is doing something truly wonderful on the upstroke and it is just a lot.

“God, Harry, you look so good, you’re so good for me,” Zayn murmurs, thumb pressing barely into the dip at the base of Harry’s neck. He feels the low whine before he hears it, sees the way Harry’s hips jerk forward. Oh, _oh_. They’re going to revisit that.

“Feels so good, Haz. So fucking—yes.” It’s just broken syllables but it feels like he’s taking Harry apart with every word so he keeps trying, keeps telling him how good it feels, how perfect Harry looks on his knees. How good Harry is being.

Then Harry’s tongue goes flat and he slides even further down Zayn’s cock, far enough that Zayn can see the stretch in his jaw, feel it when he brushes his fingertips over Harry’s cheek. He hears the wetness before he sees with his own eyes that Harry’s roughly fisting his own cock, and fuck if that isn’t one of the hottest things he’s ever seen, Harry so hard just from taking Zayn as far as he can into his mouth and then being praised for it that he has to touch himself.

“Haz, Harry, I’m—gonna, I’m gonna, fuck.” He’s got enough leverage in Harry’s curls that he can pull him off a little, but he can still feel the way his throat vibrates when he hums, and his body almost collapses in on itself with the first shudder as he tips over the edge, hands now holding Harry in place instead of trying to get him off.

“Zayn, can I—ah—I wanna come, please? On you?” Zayn isn’t sure whether Harry is asking for permission to come or specifically just to come on him but either way, he’s nodding, pulling Harry by the shoulders until he’s up on the bed with him, straddling Zayn’s hips. It’s not the right moment to say anything, but Zayn really thinks Harry’s cock might be the most beautiful one he’s ever seen, red head peeking in and out of the top of his fist, big enough to make his jaw ache just thinking about it, even as his mouth waters. It’s been a long time since he wanted to suck a dick but what a way to start up again.

The look in Harry’s eyes is almost so reverent that Zayn wants to close his eyes against it, but instead he keeps locked to Harry, murmuring encouragement.

He expects loud, he expects explosive, he expects shouting. What he doesn’t expect is that when Harry finally comes, it’s quiet and gasping, stuck on Zayn’s name. He doesn’t expect the way Harry looks at Zayn’s stomach splattered with his come like it’s the best thing he’s ever seen. He does, sort of, expect the way that Harry quietly goes to retrieve a flannel and clean them both up, the way he drifts off with his face pressed against Zayn’s armpit and his arm curled around Zayn’s torso, mumbling about his day until he’s too deep into his sleep to do so.

Laying there in the quiet, with Harry sleeping tucked against him, is like the quiet feeling he gets in his head when he finishes a painting, or the way he feels in the best moments hanging out with Louis, or like listening to his sisters talk endlessly on the phone about their days because they miss him and want him to feel like a part of their lives still. It's like all of that, and it's more at the same time, like seeing colors he hadn't even realized existed.

 

* * *

   

He wakes up to an empty bed, to what feels like an endless expanse of wrinkled white sheets; he’ll always associate his first time sleeping with Harry with white, white sheets and white hot pleasure and stars bursting behind his eyelids white white white. His trackies are next to the bed and so he pulls them on before he goes to find Harry, ignores the way the longer tuft at the top of his head is probably standing up in ten different directions.

Harry is sitting on the couch in just his pants, petting Tiger with one hand and scrolling through his phone with the other, although he looks up and smiles when Zayn walks in. “We were just about to come check on you.”

“No you weren’t.”

The grin Harry gives is almost clownish, and Zayn thinks his heart might burst. He’s disgusting, honestly. “Want me to make you a cuppa?”

“Mmmm, yeah. I’ll make breakfast?”

He doesn’t need to ask what Zayn wants, or how he takes his eggs, and Zayn doesn’t need to ask how Harry takes his tea and it feels so right that Zayn thinks that he could do this forever and _that_ makes him feel like he might panic. It’s Harry’s foot tapping rhythmically against the leg of his chair that gives him something to count, distracts him long enough to calm down. Well, calms him down until Harry goes to put something back in the fridge and sees the invitation Zayn stuck to it earlier that week.

The invitation that Harry wastes absolutely no time pulling off the fridge and brings with him (along with a pen) when he sits back down in his chair. “Why didn’t you tell me we got this? I told Liam I’d keep an eye out for it, he picked the calligrapher, he was nervous.”

“I guess I forgot.” The look he gets from Harry tells him he’s not being that convincing, but what is he supposed to say? _‘The wedding is in two months and I didn’t want to ask if you were planning on sticking around that long?’_ Yeah, sure.

“Do you want salmon or chicken? We should probably send this back soon, Sophia said her mum is being a fucking terror.”

 

* * *

   

The wedding is beautiful. Sophia and Liam decide on a combined group of unwed guests to catch the garter and the bouquet. Harry catches the bouquet. (He insists on being carried over the threshold into his flat that night. They don’t make it to the bed.)

 

* * *

 

“You know you don’t have to come to work to see me, right? We live together now, if you just stay at home long enough, I’ll show up.” It still sends a little thrill through his stomach, the idea that they live together, that most of his space is now also Harry’s space. Is _their_ space.

It’s a little scary, if he’s being totally honest, but mostly it feels like this is how it is supposed to be. Harry’s favorite mugs fit right next to Zayn’s on the shelf. Their silverware (sets bought for them by their mums, both of them) matched. All these small things that Zayn had never noticed when he went to Harry’s flat, but as they unpacked the boxes and put everything away in the new flat, it all just… felt right. The spare room is a studio, and on mornings when Zayn leaves the door open, Harry comes in and unrolls his yoga mat in the open space by the windows, and when the door is closed, he doesn’t pry.

He rarely has to close the door.

Harry is, however, currently sitting cross-legged on top of the counter at the flower shop, flipping through a seed catalog. “How many times do I have to tell you I like it here?” When he looks up, he’s smiling, and Zayn smiles back reflexively before he remembers he’s supposed to be exasperated. Right. “And I wanted to walk you home. It’s only like your fifth time walking to this place, what if you got lost? Tiger just had a whole litter of kittens, she’s feeling very delicate right now. She needs her papa." 

“You’re ridiculous. How would I get lost? It’s two doors down from your old flat." 

Harry shrugs like he can’t be bothered with the specifics of his cover story. “Love you, Zaynie.”

It’s been almost two months since the first time he said it and it still makes Zayn feel a little scared, a little excited, and so happy he could pass out. “I love you too, Hazza.”

“I don’t think I want sushi for dinner tonight. I had a dream last night that I was a fish! I had this one tiny fin and I got caught by a scuba diver. Louis was there but he was a catfish, which is weird because I think they are freshwater fish. I don’t know, really, I just know that my cousin that married that American sent me a picture holding this giant catfish. It was terrible. They made her clean it herself, and then they all ate it for dinner. Can you believe that? I could never clean a fish…”

Zayn listens to every single word.


End file.
